


Sweetheart

by jennyraylen



Series: Post-TROS [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, One Shot, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23934808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennyraylen/pseuds/jennyraylen
Summary: Rey grieves Ben’s death as she hears his voice calling to her. Starts immediately after TROS ends.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Post-TROS [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767169
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

> I’m new to Ao3 so sorry if the tags aren’t the best or I’m missing any. I originally wrote this for Tumblr shortly after TROS came out as a way to cope. Decided to post on here cause why not?

_Rey._

She ignored the phantom voice, a relic of the past. Let the past die, he had told her. Kill it, if she had to. Well, she was finally taking his advice.

_Rey, sweetheart._

Words he had never spoken, but she had heard in dreams on Jakku. A planet not dissimilar to the one she found herself on now, staring at a binary sunset. BB-8 stood silently beside her, looking up expectantly.

The past had been buried with those lightsabers, a memorial to those who had been lost. Luke. Leia. 

Ben Solo, who saved her.

Rey took a deep breath, closing her eyes, shutting out images that haunted her even now. She felt empty. Like the planet, barren. Broken. Forgotten, like her other half, discarded and displaced by the people who should have cared.

“Bee-Bee Ate,” she said, her voice cracking. “Let’s go. I can’t stay here…”

She had planned to stay longer, perhaps make this her home for a while. Remembering the past as she found her new purpose. But the past was too painful. She needed to move. Distract herself from the cracks in her soul. 

_Rey,_ she heard again, his voice desperate and raw. _I’m here._

 _No,_ she sent back, filling the word with her anger, hate, and suffering. _You’re gone._ The voice fell silent.

She boarded the _Falcon,_ BB-8 beeping questions she didn’t bother to answer. Taking one last look at the planet Anakin and Luke Skywalker had grown up on, she fired up the engines. And flew away.

-

“No, Bee-Bee Ate, I don’t know where we’re going. I’m letting the Force guide us.” It was a lie. The Force had felt distant ever since...she couldn’t finish the thought. It was too difficult to bear.

He was gone, and their connection and the Force along with him.

The _Millennium Falcon_ had a backlog of places the ship had visited. Rey chose one randomly, one that seemed long enough ago that she had never been there. She didn’t know where the coordinates led, and she didn’t bother to check. She only knew that the ship had been there, which meant Han had likely been there. If Han knew this place, maybe...maybe _he_ had too.

Rey closed her eyes, longing for sleep that had escaped her for weeks. But the rest she longed for never came. Instead, visions of her dead grandfather plagued her mind. A specific sentence played, over and over, a mystery more powerful than her own parentage.

_A dyad in the Force. Powerful as life itself._

If that were true, why had he died? “Why did you leave me?” Rey whispered, lowering her head into her hands, fighting off dry, dehydrated sobs. “How could you leave me alone?”

 _You’re not alone._ His voice, but only a memory from times past. When she had poured out her soul to him in the hut on Ahch-To and he had given her the comfort no one else could. Or was it? It felt present, not distant, as memories should. It felt real.

Rey knew better than to believe that.

The ship exited hyperspace. Rey looked up, her vision blurry for a few moments before it recentered. Takodana.

The _Falcon_ had taken her to Takodana.

-

The castle was in ruins, the planet long since abandoned by Maz Kanada and the people who had taken refuge here for centuries. Rey pushed past the rubble created by the battle between the First Order and the Resistance. BB-8 followed close behind as she hurried beyond the forest where she had met him for the first time all that time ago. It felt like a lifetime. It had barely been a year.

Rey remembered her fear and panic when she ran from the First Order, from her destiny. She remembered what the Force had whispered to her. She hadn’t understood what it meant yet, but it had terrified her. _It’s Ben,_ it had said.

The Force had lied. Her belonging was not with Ben, or with anyone else.

Rey was alone.

 _No, Rey, I’m here,_ his voice whispered. _Come find me._

Something inside her snapped, as she stared out at this representation of her painful past. “Leave me alone!” she screamed to the castle ruins. BB-8 rolled back, startled by her outburst. “You’re gone! You aren’t here, you’re…you’re...”

 _Say it._ The voice was gentle, unlike the times she had heard the words before.

“You’re dead.” Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks. “You’re gone. You’ve left me, and now you haunt my memory and refuse to let me grieve you in peace. I--I don’t--” she struggled to find words to express the anguish she felt as she looked around at this place of tragedy and death, where it had all began. What Rey wouldn’t do to stop it from beginning. 

“Do you remember what you did to me here? How you invaded my mind? Took my power and restrained me? Do you know how scared I was?”

Silence.

“I know you regretted it,” Rey said, softer. “I felt that when you held me. You had nothing but love for me.”

She took a deep breath.

“You saved me.” A sob escaped her, brought her down to the ground. She cried as BB-8 watched from a distance. Wails that could not express the emptiness she felt in her soul. “Why--did you--leave me?” she choked out.

 _Rey, I’m here,_ he repeated. _But I’m lost._

“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart,” Ben had told her in her dreams on Jakku. She knew it was his voice now--not her father, whom she had believed it was for so long. Her powerless father, who had abandoned her--whether for good intentions or no, he had left her, and he had never come back.

Ben had left her too. But he had come back to save her when it most counted. He had sacrificed everything for her. And now, he was gone, lost someplace without her. But she could feel him, reaching out, longing for her to rescue him. 

Rey had denied it, believing it to be a lie her mind had conjured up to bury the pain. But now, she felt the pull stronger than ever. It was real, and it was true. Ben was still out there, somewhere. Maybe she would have been the one to be lost, needing to be found, in some timeline long forgotten. But now, Ben was the one who had been lost. It was him she would come back for.

“I’m coming, sweetheart,” she whispered through the waning sobs. “I promise.”


End file.
